Leslie John

When we are in a high status situation, we have so much more leeway than we think.

And it's so powerful.

I'm thinking of, for example, like Angelina Jolie, the op-ed she wrote in the Times on breast cancer and double mastectomy.

And after that, so high status person, there was a noticeable uptick in people getting screened.

You can do so much good in destigmatizing things, in prompting action if you're a high status.

And again and again, we've studied this.

We've studied people in high status situations significantly.

saying some of their weaknesses, like CEOs of companies saying, my organizational skills aren't the greatest sometimes.

They're not saying like, I'm pathologically messy, that's TMI, but going a little bit more and it makes their employees like them more, be more motivated to work for them, trust them more, it has all these benefits.

Like it's kind of obvious talking about it now, but when we ask managers like, what do you say to your new team when you introduce yourself?

It's all just like positive things about themselves.

They never share what they're working on.

It often doesn't occur to us to do it.

And in so many situations, I think it's less selling, more curiosity, more question asking.

The times when you actually need to sell and persuade are very few and far between in everyday life.

And in fact, when you're trying to sell, oftentimes the way to sell is to not be.

Yeah, cut through.

So we've studied what are good ways to receive someone's disclosure.

There's some really interesting work on that.

So like if someone says something really sensitive to you, confides in you, what's a good thing to do?